1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an air bag cushion for vehicles intended to protect a passenger and, more particularly, to an air bag cushion for a front passenger seat.
2. Description of Related Art
Recently, with the increasing demands on the safety and protection for passengers, the ratio of vehicles equipped with front passenger air bags are on the increase.
A conventional front passenger air bag may be not helpful, rather dangerous for a child sitting in a front passenger seat. That is because children are usually seated on the front passenger seat using a child restraint system (CRS) and positioned on a side of front edge of the front passenger seat. In this case, the sudden expansive force of an air bag cushion in an initial expansion stage may strike a child's face and cause a neck injury of the child.
FIG. 1A is a view illustrating the expansion of an air bag cushion for a front passenger seat which was developed recently. The air bag cushion 1 is constructed so that a vertical valley 4 is formed between left and right chambers 2 and 3 (hereinafter, referred to as a ‘vertical two-chamber structure’). The left chamber 2 expands towards the left side of the upper part of the body of a passenger (not shown), the right chamber 3 expands towards the right side of the upper part of the passenger's body, and the upper portion of the valley 4 comes into contact with the passenger's face. Reference numeral 5 denotes an exterior vent hole for discharging gas from the air bag cushion. The air bag cushion 1 is designed such that a child's face comes to rest on the valley 4, mainly, on a portion around the lower end of the valley 4 in the event of a vehicle collision, thus preventing the child from being injured, unlike a conventional air bag cushion.
However, the air bag cushion having the vertical two-chamber structure shown in FIG. 1A is complicated in structure. In the process of manufacturing the air bag cushion, operations of sewing two sheets 6 and 7 along their edges as shown in FIG. 1B are frequently required. In this case, remnants 9 may be undesirably left behind outside of the sewing lines 8. In order to make the appearance good, the sheets 6 and 7 sewn along the edges as shown in FIG. 1B must be turned inside out so that the remnants 9 are not exposed to the outside of the finished air bag cushion. In the case of the vertical two-chamber structure requiring the sewing of several sheets, the sequence of sewing is complicated, so that the structure and manufacture of the air bag cushion are complicated.
The information disclosed in this Background of the Invention section is only for enhancement of understanding of the general background of the invention and should not be taken as an acknowledgement or any form of suggestion that this information forms the prior art already known to a person skilled in the art.